CHICAGO — An 18-year-old critically wounded Sunday morning was the third person to be shot during separate attacks in Chicago's downtown area in the course of little more than 24 hours Easter weekend, according to Chicago police.
Officers were called to the first block of East Lower Wacker Drive in what's known as the "Loop" about 7:10 a.m. Sunday, according to an online statement from police. The man had been driving with his girlfriend when the couple noticed they were “being followed by several unknown vehicles,” officials said.
A shooter or shooters opened fire, shooting toward the couple and striking the man in the neck, police said. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
The shooting was the second on Lower Wacker Drive this weekend. Police didn’t have an exact address for the earlier shooting, which happened about 5:15 a.m. Saturday.
Officers responded after a report that a 29-year-old man had also been traveling in a vehicle, this time as a passenger, when someone shot at him multiple times, police said. He suffered a gunshot wound to the right knee and was taken to Stroger Hospital where his condition was stabilized, officials said.
“The narrative states that the victim doesn’t know where he was but it was downtown for sure,” a police spokesman wrote in an email Sunday.
A third person was shot in the nearby South Loop earlier Sunday.
Police explained that an armed robber who was in the process of trying to hold up someone else, accidentally shot himself during the commission of the crime.
About 1:30 a.m. officers were called to the 1100 block of South State Street, where they located a 26-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound to his leg. Authorities determined he had been “attempting to rob an unidentified victim,” when he shot himself in the leg as he and the other person physically struggled.
The man was treated at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where his condition was stabilized, officials said.
All three shootings happened in the Chicago police’s Central District and no arrests had been made in any of the attacks.
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